A/N:

First off, a HUGE thank you to everybody who has been reading and responding to my work. THANK YOU!!!! Secondly, I apologize for starting a new one when I've got Stars hanging (although the good news for people reading that is that I've got about a quarter of the next chapter written on that one, so hopefully some time next week I'll be back to it as well.) Third, I'm not one hundred percent certain exactly where this is going or how long it's going to be before I call it done and move on to the next bit, but this seemed to warrent its own story, rather than being stuck as part of More Short Stories (where I almost put it.) Ok, lastly, I can't seem to get the bugs out of the formatting, so pretty please ignore any formatting glitches. Grr.... I'll try later to sort it out, but right now I have to go and make my own version of Jack's Galaxy Famous Chili for my potluck tonight! heheheheh

This picks up right where Love and Reason (by Xero Shane) left off. I'm starting out on a much lower note than the ending of Love and Reason, but Vance was actually right about one thing, Ziva has a lot of healing to do…hopefully by now you all know I'm a sucker for a happy ending. You probably don't have to read Love and Reason to get the gist of what's going on here at the beginning, but it would certainly help (besides, it's a great story.)

Extra special huge great big thank you's go to Xero Shane, for writing the story that spawned this one and to Kitsa for bouncing ideas around with me and for coming up with the notion that Jack needed to poach Ziva away from the people who clearly don't appreciate her anyway.

DOUBT

"There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt.
Doubt separates people.
It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations.
It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills."

Buddha

Chapter One

March 10, 2010

Is love a tender thing?
It is too rough, too rude, too boisterous, and it pricks like thorn.

William Shakespeare (from Romeo and Juliet)

Unable to sleep, former Mossad officer Ziva David sat in the semidarkness of the plane's cabin, observing her fellow passengers, most of whom weren't having any difficulty sleeping at all on the pre-dawn flight. One woman was knitting… a man a few rows up was reading a newspaper. She could hear the rustle of the pages as he turned them. Other than that, all she heard was snoring. Ziva closed her eyes; she didn't knit and she didn't feel like reading and besides, the only thing she had with her was a copy of Tim's new book, the continuing adventures of LJ Tibbs and his team. The last thing she needed to see in print was the blossoming love affair between "Tommy" and "Lisa" who had apparently finally declared their true feelings for one another and were set to get married despite complications brought on by an invasion from outer space.

A few years ago that might have sounded like science fiction, but not any more. Aliens were becoming an accepted part of life… she could not believe that they weren't all bad, no matter what Abby claimed. Still, Abby was the one friend she felt she had left; maybe she was the one friend she had at all, if one counted friends as those you could turn to when there was no one else you could trust. Not that Gibbs wasn't a trusted friend, truly he was and she couldn't have asked for a better friend than him—but she couldn't stay with him any longer.

Tony did not love her. He couldn't. He might have said that he did…he might even think it, believe it, but she knew it couldn't possibly be true. It wasn't that she felt herself unlovable, she was, she knew she was—she sounded defensive to herself, even inside her own head. She had a lot to offer to someone…but not to someone like Tony.

Tony was like…he was like an actor in one of those movies he loved so much. Only she was nothing like one of the leading ladies. Leading ladies did not know how to kill a man using only her bare hands, they did not know how to disarm a bomb, let alone construct one if the occasion called for it. Leading ladies were quiet, charming, sophisticated…not that someone who was all of those things would know what to do with Anthony DiNozzo, she mused, almost smiling. Tony was not quiet or sophisticated at all…no, that wasn't true, either. He could be quiet…he was quiet. Underneath all his bluster there was a truly remarkable man…

Her fingers brushed against her lips where he'd kissed her—or maybe she had kissed him, she wasn't sure any more who had initiated it, not but twelve hours ago. She could almost still smell his aftershave (which was ridiculous, she told herself. She had showered, changed. No trace of him lingered behind.)

Tony had never called Gibbs last night. He hadn't gotten the chance. They had gone out to dinner—it had been lovely, really. Pizza, wine, then back to his apartment, a movie…one thing led to another and then…

She had left without saying good bye, either to Tony or their former boss. It was better this way, she told herself. Again. No matter how many times she told herself that, it did not ease the guilt she felt over slinking out in the middle of the night or the tightening sensation in her gut whenever she thought about Tony waking up alone after having gone to sleep curled up around her. It was just that laying there in the dark, unable to sleep, she had thought about so many things, things she almost wished she hadn't thought about—things Tony certainly hadn't been thinking about when he decided to quit is job like that. And for what? Her? Why had he done that?

Deep down (or perhaps not so deep down) she knew she did love him, she had, she must have done for some time…but she was afraid. She did not want to hurt him and to say that she had a less than spectacular track record with love would be an understatement. Maybe it wasn't her fault, she reckoned, maybe it was the way she'd been raised, her father…she cringed at the thought of him. After everything they had been though, everything the whole world had seen last year, and he was still willing to treat her as expendable… just another asset to be used, discarded…

Besides, Tony has enough to worry about, he does not need me right now, she added to herself, almost as an afterthought. He had to figure out what he was going to do for a job, because if she knew Tony—and she did—she doubted he had anything set aside for a raining day. Rainy day…yes, that was it, a rainy day, not a raining day. He had to sort out his life and he didn't need be worrying about, too. After all, without the status her position as Mossad liaison gave her, without a job with NCIS, she just another Israeli citizen visiting the US. She could not stay, she couldn't just move there, there were mountains of paperwork and somehow she suspected that she would get no help at all from Leon Vance if she decided to seek US citizenship. She expected even worse out of her own father.

But there was one person she knew—or at least suspected—who would not be hindered by 'red tape.'

Ironically (or perhaps not, Ziva couldn't decide) when her flight landed a few hours later at Cardiff International Airport, the rain was coming down hard…

………………………………………………………………..

"What do you mean, gone?" DiNozzo gaped at his former boss. Gibbs had just told him he'd woken up to find little more than a note in the guest room, a room that Ziva had tidied up so neatly, he'd hardly have known she'd been there at all.

Gibbs shrugged and poured the younger man a cup of coffee. "She left this," he handed over the note; he'd been carrying it tucked into his jean's pocket, although he didn't know why. He supposed maybe it was because he was worried about her. Ziva might be trying to hide it, but the incident in Somalia was taking a toll on her and he knew it. He'd figured she would take some time, sort herself out… he knew she'd be all right, she just hadn't expected her to up and vanish in the middle of the night. He'd been more worried until he finally got a phone call, albeit not from Ziva herself.

Tony ignored the coffee, though it smelled better than usual and that was saying something, Gibbs had a knack for making a good cup of coffee. But coffee wasn't what he was interested in. Tony unfolded the note, recognizing Ziva's efficient, distinctly un-girly handwriting.

Gibbs,

I did not tell you everything that happened yesterday. I am sorry. I need to sort some things out and here is no longer a good place to do that. Thank you for letting me stay with you. Thank you for everything. For believing in me. For Somalia.

Ziva

"That's it?" Tony asked him, unwilling to believe she was gone. "She didn't say where she was going?"

"Nope." Which didn't mean he didn't know, but that wasn't what Tony had asked. Harkness had given him a call to tell him that the former Mossad officer had arrived in Cardiff safe and sound, turning up on Tim and Abby's doorstep just a couple of hours ago, and to try to piece together himself what had actually happened in D.C. because Ziva, of course, wasn't talking. Gibbs hadn't been able to tell him much at the time, but he was beginning to get a clearer picture of what might have happened, or at least who had happened. "Wanna tell me about it, DiNozzo?" he asked, not making any special effort to sound casual.

"I think I screwed up, Boss," the younger man admitted, not looking up from the note. His coffee. He didn't remember putting the one down and picking the other up, he just wished it was something a lot stronger than coffee in his cup. "I told her I loved her."

If Gibbs thought anything of that, he didn't let it show. "Do you?" was all he asked.

Tony stalled a moment, sipping his coffee. He knew the answer, but did he want to admit it…? Did he have a choice? "Yeah. I do. I have. For a lot longer…for a while," he fumbled. He wasn't sure exactly when it had started, he just knew that dancing with her at Tim and Abby's wedding, he'd known how much he missed her. More than missed her. He'd felt more than a little jealous when Jones or Jones-Harkness or whatever his name really was, Timmy's boss's husband or partner or whatever, had asked her to dance. It hadn't helped to find out that the perfect little Welshman apparently pitched for both teams.

The sound of Gibbs' voice jarred him out of his misery, but the words didn't help any:

"If that's how you feel, you didn't screw up."

He looked up, startled. "But she—she ran away because of me, didn't she, Boss?" it was only barely a question. It was his fault. If he'd just kept his big fat mouth shut…

Gibbs shook his head. "She—" he wanted to say that she hadn't run away, but he didn't like lying, even when it was the thing to do to spare someone else's feelings. He doubted Tony would believe a lie right now anyway, he was too busy beating himself up, taking the blame over things that weren't his fault. "Ziva needs to put space between her and… the things she needs to 'clear her head' about," he settled for the most diplomatic description of the situation he could think of. "Give her time, Tony," he rested a hand on the younger man's shoulder. "She'll be back."

"What if you're wrong? What if she doesn't come back?" he asked, unaware of just how despondent he sounded. What if I never see her again…? Suddenly he wasn't interested in the coffee any more. Ziva had the skill-set necessary to vanish. If she had really run away from him, he knew he never would see her again.

Gibbs just shook his head some more. "Come on. I could use a hand in the basement," he motioned towards the basement door. Downstairs his sixth boat lay waiting to be worked on.

Numbly, Tony followed him down the steps. He didn't have anything better to do anyway. No job…no girl… what did you really think was going to happen, DiNozzo? he berated himself. That she was going to leap into your arms like some movie heroine and the two of you would ride off into the sunset together? That would have implied that he was a hero, something he knew he wasn't. He was just an ordinary guy with an extraordinary ability to screw things up…

I love you whether or not you love me
I love you even if you think I don't
Sometimes I find you doubt my love for you
But I don't mind
Why should I mind, Why should I mind

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway
What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

Can anybody love anyone so much that they will never fear
Never worry never be sad
The answer is they cannot love this much nobody can
This is why I don't mind you doubting

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway
What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

And maybe love is letting people be just what they want to be
The door always must be left unlocked
To love when circumstance may lead someone away from you
And not to spend the time just doubting

What is love anyway, does anybody Love anybody anyway

Howard Jones